EDITORIALS: Take this seriously

Friday

Jan 31, 2014 at 2:00 AM

In a letter to the editor on the opposite page, Ron Beaty of West Barnstable makes his case for demolishing the Cape Cod Commission.

Edward F. Maroney

In a letter to the editor on the opposite page, Ron Beaty of West Barnstable makes his case for demolishing the Cape Cod Commission. You may have seen his signs with that message on some properties in Hyannis and elsewhere.

Beaty’s various crusades over the years may lead some to discount the effort, and there’s some logic to that, but this is no time for supporters of the Commission to ignore him and his supporters.

On message to the nth degree, Beaty has turned the Commission’s raison d’être against it, arguing that it has failed to “keep a special place special” and not fostered balance between saving the environment and employing the people who live here.

Instead of seeing the Commission for what it is – a tool applied by commissioners (appointed, most of them, by each elected board of selectmen on the Cape) to adjust that balance, Beaty sees the agency as a monkey wrench stymieing the wheel of progress. He would have us return to the days when individual towns, many lacking the personnel to review development proposals, would have less of a presence at the negotiating table.

In unity there is strength, which Beaty recognizes. If his petition drive succeeds in even one of the 15 towns, it will set in motion the potential dissolution of the land use agency.

Commission advocates – those who helped found it and guide it – should be speaking up now about its worth. The public attention bandwidth can be narrow, and the withdrawal movement is disproportionately represented right now.

It’s not inconceivable that a town’s voters, grumpy about municipal spending but unwilling to cut local services, could kick the Commission instead. In the last decade, a petition to put the withdrawal question on the ballot in Barnstable was defeated in a very close town council vote.

If you live in Barnstable and wonder what the agency has done for your town, go to http://www.capecodcommission.org/resources/administration/CCCAnnualReportFY13.pdf and scan the Commission’s annual report for FY2013. You’ll not only see how it’s worked with your own community but plenty of information on its support services for all the others on the Cape.

A sampling includes the Regional Economic Strategic Executive Team [RESET] collaboration with the town looking at redevelopment and rezoning opportunities at four major malls on the Route 132, Hyannis corridor; leadership on the initiative to redesign Yarmouth Road and the Hyannis rotary and related roads; water quality sampling of freshwater ponds; and the regional effort to find site-appropriate, affordable options to reduce nitrogen loading in coastal embayments.

Rather than frustrating economic development, the Commission has been encouraging towns to designate areas as growth centers and negotiate agreements that allow development without heavy Commission review.

Bailing out of the Cape Cod Commission at this point in the region’s history, after decades of test flights to improve its performance, just doesn’t make sense. Everyone who believes that has an obligation to say so now.